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Cosgrove Hall
Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall, together with John Hambley and a hugely talented pool of names like Brian Trueman, Bridget Appleby, Jackie Cockle, Chris Randall, and Barry Purves have been producing animated hit after hit for more than 25 years. 'DangerMouse', 'Count Duckula', 'Noddy', 'Oakie Doke', 'Chorlton And The Wheelies', 'Wind In The Willows', 'Jamie And The Magic Torch', 'Cockleshell Bay' and more, so many more - These boys and girls have been responsible for a whole raft of animated brilliance... Uniquely amongst British studios, Cosgrove Hall has shifted adeptly between different animated forms, from traditional cel techniques to stop-motion modelwork and on now, to computer generated imagery. Their cel-based projects have always had a rather surreal bent, with the accent firmly on wit, eccentricity and peculiarly British nonsense. From Cuckooland to Transylvania to Big City, these worlds have been populated by a mad menagerie of Truncheon-Eating Policemen, Vampire Duck Hunters, and Badly-Drawn Brothers. Witty creations, sparkling scripts and design have enabled these shows to overcome the limitations of their tight budgets and fling mud in the eye of the American studios, for so long unchallenged in their dominance of the kids tv market... By contrast, Cosgrove Hall's stop-motion projects have developed in a very different direction. The accent here has been on understatement and sophistication. Series and films have displayed a level of intimacy and detail which makes them look like a million dollars. In the eighties they steered towards the naturalistic, achieving remarkable arresting results. From a technical point of view 'Cinderella', 'The Pied Piper Of Hamelin' and 'The Fool Of The World' are timeless marvels to study frame-by-labour-intensive-frame. It's said that the Pied Piper cast included 1,000 individual puppet rats. In the last decade or so Cosgrove's 3D direction has altered course slightly. The model series have been designed with a younger audience in mind, and a dash of the fun-tastic has been added to the mixture. Witness 'Noddy' and 'Oakie Doke', two splendidly observed creations which utilize all the skill and subtlety of technique acquired from those earlier films, but packaged up bright and beautiful for a preschool audience... Never one to stand still, the studio has now been bitten by the CGI bug, but the team haven't forgotten their roots and the same level of care, attention and craftsmanship is being employed to the new format. 'Fetch The Vet' and 'Engie Benjy' wear the Cosgrove stamp of quality, whilst seamlessly blending computer-rendered elements into its traditional set-ups. Recent revivals of 'Bill & Ben' and 'Andy Pandy' are continuing that subtle blending of techniques, whilst again pushing at the envelope of quality.... A little history Brian Cosgrove and Mark Hall go back a long way - all the way to Manchester's Regional College Of Art in the late 1950s. Mark graduated in 1957 and Brian 12 months later. In the 1960s they worked as graphic designers for Granada TV. In 1971 Mark left to form Stop Frame Animations, and Brian joined him a year later. Their first production, 'The Magic Ball' was an award-winning series said to have been filmed in Brian's garden shed. Other Stop Frame productions include a splendid version of 'Noddy' (remade by them twenty years later, of course), and a one-off adaptation of 'Captain Noah And His Floating Zoo'... Cosgrove Hall Productions eventually came together in 1976, with exec producer John Hambley now onboard what was in fact a subsidiary of broadcaster Thames TV. First came the surreal delights of 'Chorlton And The Wheelies', titled after the Manchester suburb - Chorlton-Cum-Hardy - where the fledgling studio was now based. 'Jamie And The Magic Torch' followed swiftly on Chorlton's heels (or wheels, even?), and a TV-adaptation of Gerald Durrell's 'The Talking Parcel'. Animated inserts for 'Rainbow' continued through from the Stop Frame days and included a mixture of traditional animation - 'Lines And Shapes' - and stop motion - 'Grandma Bricks of Swallow Street', 'Sally and Jake', and 'Robin And Rosie of Cockleshell Bay'. The latter spawned its own extraordinarily successful series, of course... The 80s were dominated by three towering creations - 'DangerMouse', 'Count Duckula' and 'The Wind In The Willows'. The mouse and the duck were bright, sprite, and utterly ridiculous. 'Willows', meanwhile, was steeped in a golden glow of nostalgia. Between them, these series broke America via Nickelodeon, collected an armful of prestigious awards and ingrained themselves upon the minds of a generation. The world appeared to be Cosgrove Hall's oyster. But then, incredibly, in 1993 the studio hit a Big Wall. Their parent company, Thames TV lost its broadcast franchise. The studio's funding looked doomed. One casualty of the ensuing chaos was 'Truckers', the first series in a trilogy based on Terry Pratchett's Bromeliad books. Both planned sequels were swallowed up into development hell. But the company was rejuvenated via a brand new deal with Anglia TV and a slightly-tweaked name, Cosgrove Hall Films. With it came a slate of spanking-new animation favourites for a plethora of different companies. The leaner, sharper Cosgrove Hall had its eye firmly on the world market and some extremely interesting production partnerships. 'Noddy' and 'Oakie Doke' were both tailored into huge hits for BBC Worldwide, 'The Animal Shelf' for that all-conquering Mouse House, Disney and 'Lavender Castle', a co-production with another British toon god, Gerry Anderson... The last few years have seen Cosgrove Hall building on established successes. A third generation of fans have discovered 'Foxbusters', 'Fetch The Vet', 'Bill & Ben' and 'Andy Pandy', and there are new fans for 'Albie' and 'Engie Benjy'. Development work has continued alongside the series. Cosgrove Hall Digital was launched to exploit the new computer-driven world. Their cgi-short 'Blink' has 'wow' the industry in 2002. And in development is 'The InBreds', their first attempt at a truly 'adult' series since the days of their 'Captain Kremmen' inserts for 'The Kenny Everett Video Show' in 1978. Both Brian and Mark have now stepped down from active duty at the studio, but their influence is still there alongside the array of talent who appear able to churn out success after success almost at will. By 'eck, they've done well, so they 'ave... Of mice and toads Everyone has their own particular Cosgrove Hall favourite, but in terms of their cel-based successes one figure stands head and shoulders above their mountain of success. He's white, stares calmly in the face of evil, and wears an eye-patch. 'DangerMouse' was a gem, conceived in 1976 as an extension of Patrick McGoohan's 'Danger Man' character from the sixties, DM developed via a rather ponderous and ill-voiced pilot in to a world-beating, crime-fighting superstar. With the series launch in the eighties, DM and his bumbling spectacled sidekick Penfold took on board liberal dollops of Bond pastiche and, in the process, took the company's success 'across the pond' to America, stopping New York in its tracks (almost literally). When a New York TV station cancelled the show to broadcast a Mayoral event there were howls of protest. The series spawned an almost-as-successful spin-off too, in the form of the vegetarian 'Count Duckula'. Even now, twenty years on, DangerMouse is a 'hot property' , his name helping to shift a brand-new wave of associated merchandise and apparel... For many it is in the 3D realm that Cosgrove Hall truly excel, and it's the timeless enchantment of 'The Wind In The Willows' which steals that particular crown for brilliance. This is the definitive telling of Kenneth Grahame's oft-told tale. The woodland folk were beautifully designed and modelled by Brian Cosgrove and Bridget Appleby, who produced so many classic characters during the company's 'golden years'. Each ball and socket model cost a cool £5,000 to make - no surprise when you se the finished films. Those 'Willows' characters were exquisitely animated down to every last twitching whisker. The budget was pushed up by a microscopic attention to background details, with each set seemingly planted with individual flora and miniaturized implements, items and object d'art. The woodland world was complimented by a haunting, melancholic theme tune and spot-on casting for the voices. The original film went on to win a BAFTA, and the subsequent series and second film, 'Oh, Mr Toad!' collected another hearty helping of awards and prizes from around the globe...